Many thanks to Brain who asks:
“Thomas, I read your review of the Xiegu G90 transceiver on the SWLing Post and it seemed your overall impression was positive. I bought a G90 some time ago and love it. So far, I’ve only been listening with it, but hope to pass both my Technician and General class license exams this month. Curious why you stated that you sold it after your review. Could you shed a little light on that decision? Inquiring mind here. Thanks so much for your articles and videos.”
Good question, Brian! And bravo on tackling both your Tech and General class license exams in one go! We’re rooting for you!
The short answer is it had more to do with my own personal preferences than the radio’s performance and specifications.
As I stated in my review, I think the G90 is a great value and certainly a capable field radio. It must be one of the most popular portable transceivers in the Parks On The Air (POTA) program (along with the Yaesu FT-891) which is certainly worth noting.
You would be hard-pressed to find a transceiver with the features of the G90–including an excellent internal ATU and 20 watts output–for less than $600 and the G90 is currently only $425 US.
If you have a limited budget, and like the overall specs and features of the G90, you really can’t go wrong.
Personal preferences
When I review a product, I do my best not to allow my own personal preferences to cloud my judgement. I try to imagine how I’d review a piece of gear based on being in a number of other operators’ shoes.
One of my pet peeves, in fact, is to read a product review and find that the reviewer is indulging in nit-picking and hyper-focusing on particular characteristics, features, and design shortcomings. I want to hear the negatives for sure, but I also want to feel comfortable that the reviewer’s personal preferences didn’t cloud their overall objectivity.
I also value real-word, hands-on experience in a product review.
After purchasing the Xiegu G90, I took it to the field and made a number of POTA activations with it. It never disappointed. I also used it in the shack for a couple of months. I found that the display was quite useful, easy to read, and it had most of the functions and features I tend to use in the field. Never once did I feel it was under-performing or not meeting my expectations. If anything, the G90 exceeded my expectations.
In fact, I remember telling some of my friends that the G90 was a “keeper” after taking it on a few field outings. But after my review, I found that I rarely reached for it when heading to the field. Why? Turns out some of my own personal preferences surfaced:
Memory Keying
Most of my other QRP transceivers have CW memory keying and/or voice memory keying. The Xiegu G90 does not.
For POTA and SOTA activators, voice and CW memory keying is a useful feature, as it frees you to do other things like log, eat a sandwich, or talk to others while calling CQ. In other words, it can help with your “work flow.” If you’ve watched my activation videos, you might have noticed that I tend to use memory keying for calling CQ and, sometimes, for sending 73s.
When walking out the door to hit the field, I tend to grab my transceivers that have memory keying functions.
Audio
The G90 has an excellent internal speaker for use in the field. With that said–and this is hard to describe–I find its overall audio characteristics a little “harsh” and unrefined. I found that, over time, the G90 gave me a bit of listener fatigue during long sessions in the field or shack. That’s not to say it has bad audio–it’s just not as good as some of my other transceivers.
Key clicks
ARRL lab testing shows that the G90 has key clicks in transmit. In fact, the key clicks were bad enough in their testing that they suggested never using the G90 with an external amplifier. For those of us who don’t use amplifiers, this may never be a factor at all. Also, Xiegu retailers sell affordable external amplifiers to pair with the G90, so I must assume it doesn’t affect all amplifiers negatively. If I’m being honest with myself, I think this was another nail in the coffin.
In summary…
I knew the G90 would collect dust, so I sold it.
However, I know operators who love the G90 so much, they sold their pricier rigs after buying a G90. I even know operators who own two G90s: one for the shack, one for the field. With a total investment of only $850, I see why they made that choice.
The G90 just wasn’t for me though.
A final note about the new Xiegu GSOC
Ironically, I was asked by Radioddity to evaluate the new Xiegu GSOC controller only a couple weeks after I sold my original G90. Since the GSOC is designed to pair with the G90 , they had to send me another G90 on loan for the evaluation.
If you have a G90 and have considered purchasing the GSOC, I would strongly urge you to read my latest review of the GSOC.
In short: I can’t recommend it. The G90 is a much better radio without the GSOC controller, in my opinion.
Do you own the G90?
Have you even owned or operated the Xiegu G90? What do you consider to be its pros and cons? Please comment!
I’ve owned and sold 2 (1 at a time)G90s in the course of 8 months. The pro s have been covered and I agree with the majority of them. I chose to get rid of them because:
Like you I found the audio wore me down after any prolonged listening. Be it internal speaker, external sound powered speaker, or headphones – the audio quality is not up to other rigs.
The antenna tuner, and swr measurement performance bounce around from fw version to version. I found swr measurement extremely ‘optimistic’ with swr often worse after tuning even though the antenna tuner had satisfied itself that the swr was minimum. Raves about the tuner ‘effectively tuning a wet noodle’ were not borne out in practice, at least with me.
Lack of effective noise reduction.
No service plan in US. Part and parcel to lack of documentation. User group left to figure it out. I don’t know if the company fears someone will reverse engineer the product or not, but the lack of documentation, or at least a US service offering, is a turn off to me. Things break and shipping a product back to China for service isn’t cheap. Dealer provided warranty can offset this for a year but that doesn’t solve the overall problem
Detent tuning and lack of variable progressive tuning (automatically varies tuning step in relation to knob rotation speed) makes for awkward frequency excursions and fine tuning.
FW updates, more often than not, seem to break something that wasn’t broken in the previous version. New functions are rare because they seem to be peddling as fast as they can to fix problems. To be fair though, I must give them credit for being responsive, far more so than some of the larger manufactures.
RIT selection and operation not well thought out at all.
In my opinion, the G90 offers good value for the price – no doubt – and Xiegu is a good company trying to do the right thing. They’re just not where they need to be in terms of a polished product.
Strictly my opinion.
I liked the G90 quite a bit, but like Tom I ended up selling it. The receive quality was good to me. My biggest issue was a personal preference – I didn’t care for the vfo tuning. It could use a cw memory keyer, too. I made a little video to show the difference between the tuning of the 703 (which I like) and the G90 (which I don’t), but it’s probably not an issue for most people and it is a neat little feature-packed radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMov-qvhgiY
Hope this helps someone. 73 Ron
I had a G90 and work good for a while, and then some of button stop workink and the display turn white try to install different FW and reset the unit no luck, The worse I try to contact several time Xiegu Corp. customer services and no answer Well is it expensive door holder, I will recomend no buy the unit, unless you got and insurance to repair it, but good luck to find a place to do the Job. and by the way where in China you can send It…..
Carlos, if you bought your G90 from an authorized distributor, you might touch base with them. Some offer 24 month warranties (like MFJ).
Sorry to hear about those problems, though.
Best,
Thomas
I agree with Dave and Thomas. The worst thing for me was hiss and harsh audio output. I cannot listen to Xiegu G90 with high impedance headphones more that 10 minutes. I did RX3ALL modification for reducing this harsh audio output but still was not satisfied with sound quality.
https://youtu.be/nDiDgeyg3oQ
Finally sold it with no regret.
Owned and let it go too.
Hiss noise, never solved deaf receiver after ATU cycle, bugs in filter BW settings where center frequency moved while BW changed, f/w update when new bugs appears etc. was too annoying for me.
I revert it to last working f/w and let it go…
Cheers.
You must have been using an older firmware version there Petr as none of those issues exist in recent versions.
Love the G-90 but really wanting memory keying. Looking at the KX-2 or the Lab999 Discovery. The Lab 999 is nice but no ATU. The ATU in the G-90 has spoiled me. When they say it will tune a wet noodle, they are not kidding. I compared it to my IC-7300 and there was no comparison. The G-90 out performed it every time
I still have my G90, but you mention one of the missing features I really wish it had – a memory keyer. I tried to get around this by trying to use a program such as CW Type, FLRig, etc as keyers but alas, they won’t work with the G90 to generate CW! They will key the rig but no power goes out. This also eliminates using a keyboard for CW. I have developed a small tremor in my hands and I really like using a keyboard now but can’t with the G90. If someone has a solution for this I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, I’m quite happy with the G90.
Hi, Buddy,
I agree completely. This is one of the “cons” I mentioned in my Xiegu G90 review (which is actually on the SWLing Post).
I hope someone might have insight about setting up keyboard control.
Cheers,
Thomas
I cannot imagine there being a problem keying almost any radio with a computer. That being said, as someone who is well versed in electronics and programming, some computers don’t have serial ports any more and use the usb port as a replacement which requires drivers and the program to get it going. I would think most modern programs like FLRig would have the proper drivers but I see that they don’t. In this case a USB to Serial adaptor is needed and they are cheap on amazon. Don’t give up if you really want to do it. I would be glad to help you personally if you want to contact me. Look me up KE4LH, tom… if you want. Hope that helps..
You can get keyboard morse by using one of those modes with vox triggering as opposed to serial triggering. Youll need to have it in USB mode but it should work, that’s how I do it 🙂
I’ve got a g90 also, though strongly considering selling/ trading it off. It’s great out in the parks and summits around here( the great northwe(s)t), but I live in the city and it doesn’t handle base duty very well with all the city interference. I’m actually looking at getting a used icom 718 one I get the g90 sold. Not enough budget to buy one before selling the other unfortunately.
73
KJ7SHW
Hi, Anthony,
The IC-718 isn’t a bad radio per se, but I would encourage you go go with something like the Yaesu FT-891 instead if possible. You can buy them new for about $630-640 and I’ve recently seen them used for around $500. I believe it’s a better radio and even a bit more portable with featured like CW and Voice message memory keying which is incredibly useful with POTA.
My experience with the IC-718 is that it doesn’t handle RF dense environments very well. I’ve used them during Field Day and found them to be mediocre. For day-to-day stuff, they’re fine, but if this is going to be your main/primary rig for the field and at the QTH, I’d splurge for the FT-891.
Cheers,
Thomas
K4SWL
Thanks for the recommendation Thomas. I wasn’t aware the 718 isn’t great in rf dense situations, the main problem in having with the g90, so I know I would be unhappy. I’ve never had a radio with cw or voice keying memory, my first transceiver was a Kenwood Ts 820s, great radio but not exactly portable or feature packed.
I’ll check out the Yaesu FT 891, sounds like a better direction for my purposes. Thanks again
Cheers to you as well,
Tony
KJ7SHW
I agree 100%. My 891 runs circles around the 718 in every aspect. Xmit audio is superb on the 891 with the eq set up just right and an MD-100a desk mic it sounds like a big rig. Receives very quiet with excellent fidelity. I now use the 718 as a sw listener.
So what is your preferred POTA rig now?
Honestly? I don’t have a favorite. I suppose, “I love all of my children.” 🙂
I can say that I really enjoy the KX3, KX2, KX1, IC-705, TX-500, FT-817ND, T-T Argonaut V, Mission RGO One and quite a few ultra-portable CW-only rigs.
The most ridiculous fun I have had on a POTA activation was with a DX-40 and a Tecsun PL-880. I am going to have to go back with full valvestate park setup Drake 2B + DX-40 for a POTA activation. My KX2 is a really capable radio. It made me sell my IC-7300 because the RX on the KX2 was better. I now have a FTdx10 for the home base, and that RX can’t be beat. That said, the Drake 2B with the matching Q multiplier seems to really dig weak CW out of the noise — definitely better than the 7300 was at that task. I was surprised that a radio made in the 60’s could be rock solid even cold, and then pull super faint signals out of the noise. It would also not be fair to compare the audio to the Xiegu G90. The only thing better than the Drake 2B is my old TS-520S, that audio is a dream, so I was thinking about getting the Xiegu G90 to have a new to play with, but I think I will pass. Thanks Thomas for the heads up. Vy 73 de Chris KQ6UP SK ..
Several major issues …deaf RX after TX release, filter cut-off setting issue, 15W instead of 20W, SWR measurement issue, high ATU loss, each FW update brought anothe new issue as price for single solver problem! I am happy that radio is sold with minimum money losses! My new RGO works like champ and it is excellent performer and sweet keepet. (www.lz2jr.com)
Sri for several typo errors in preview post. Here is corrected.
Several major issues …deaf RX after TX release, filter cut-off setting issue, 15W instead of 20W, SWR measurement issue, high ATU loss, each FW update brought anothe new issues as price for single solved problem! I am happy that radio is sold with minimum money losses! My new RGO works like champ and it is excellent performer and sweet keeper. (www.lz2jr.com)
Hola a todos! A alguien le ha ocurrido que de pronto el G90 deje de transmitir en CW? Solo en CW no transmite y no le ha ocurrido nada raro, me refiero a sobretensión o golpes o descargas. En el manual de reparaciones este fallo no aparece y no se si meterme a desarmarlo sin una guía.
Solo eso, por lo demás no he tenido problemas al usarlo.
Agradezco comentarios
73
Gus
I’ve owned my G90 for several years and am overall quite satisfied with it.
Detented tuning is my main gripe as I find it very awkward and supplied VFO knob has an unpleasant feel to me. Having to continually push buttons to alter tuning rate quickly becomes tiresome. Fitting the VFO knob of an old FT290 improved the feel a good deal for me.
Second gripe is that I find running RF Gain at 30% or less gives best results, but the RF gain affects the S meter values, so I have a written ready reckoner to translate the displayed attenuated s-strength to their real values.
But in spite of these negatives, I’m hanging onto the G90 as its just so versatile and a good low cost back-up rig.
I’ve owned my G90 for several years and am overall quite satisfied with it.
Detented tuning is my main gripe as I find it very awkward and supplied VFO knob has an unpleasant feel to me. Having to continually push buttons to alter tuning rate quickly becomes tiresome. Fitting the VFO knob of an old FT290 improved the feel a good deal for me.
Second gripe is that I find running RF Gain at 30% or less gives best results, but the RF gain affects the S meter values, so I have a written ready reckoner to translate the displayed attenuated s-strength to their real values.
But in spite of these negatives, I’m hanging onto the G90 as its just so versatile and a good low cost back-up rig.
I have had my G-90 for 2 years and love it. I also have a KX-3 which is a lot more expensive, but a great radio. I will take my G-90 to Field Day for phone operation, and my KX-3 for CW. That combination works for me.
Peter – WA6HXM
I was looking at the ARRL Lab Review and the clicks mentioned were sounds of the relays to the operator, not ‘key-clicks’ or poor shaped keying. I looked very closely and I believe you might have gotten that wrong (respectfully). I am looking very close at buying a G90 and if you heard separately from the review in QST I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks. 73
Hi, David,
Looking back at this review, I realize I could have described this a little more accurately. I was primarily borrowing terminology from Rob Sherwood who’d also noted this particular note in the ARRL review. By clicking, I mean that the CW sidebands are high enough that the ARRL couldn’t recommend running the G90 with an amplifier. In fact, the G90 they tested exceeded FCC harmonic and spurious emission levels. Here’s a clip from the lab notes:
I did test my G90 on a friend’s service monitor and could see that the CW waveform wasn’t pretty. At QRP levels (5 watts or less), I doubt this would ever bother another op who shared an adjacent frequency.
The G90 does have a t/r mechanical relay in CW, but I feel it’s not loud at all. Then again, relay clicking doesn’t bother me like it does some. Also, the G90 has what I would call semi break-in, not full on QSK.
All that said, the G90 is a bit of a workhorse in the POTA community. It must still be one of the most popular POTA radios of all time and I’ve many friends who swear by them! It’s certainly been a bit of a cash cow for Xiegu which is why it’s still being produced today.
Cheers,
Thomas
Thanks Thomas. That is enough for me to avoid it. Pity though, the size/weight and 20 Watts make it really attractive for POTA/SOTA.
Love your POTA Activation videos. All the best, Dave / W2DAB
Good review. I have a G90 and a FT891. I’m a cw guy only. What I find strange is that with ft891 I make less mistakes and the cw sounds much better. It’s kind of hard to describe. But in general I like doing cw with ft891 better.